pure-ftp woes

I set up my server a couple of months ago and used the pure-ftp with mysql how to on the site and my server has been a happy camper until about 2 weeks ago, 2 events occurred not sure which one borked the server though.

The first was an update via apt-get upgrade, the second was someone trying to brute force the server, looked like a zombie script. So I turned off the server as it was not needed for a day or so then fired it up again

Once it was up I noticed the following. When I try and connect (I use filezilla as a client) i get the following

I thought it may initially be an issue with my user but it seems to affect all users, the other thing I did notice is that the virtual ftp user has no write access on their directory, and I have to manually chmod/chown the directory this however has been around since day 1 of my install.

The actual ftp user is set to "No login allowed" in webmin and their home directory is set to /bin/null, and the virtual ftp users UID & GID are correct, I am at a bit of a loss here, any tips?